


Ashes Round the Yard

by cofax



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellen's mother ambushed her after the funeral.  Spoilers through "No Exit" (season 2).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes Round the Yard

As she might have expected, Ellen's mother ambushed her after the funeral.

Bill's brother lived on the west side of town, only about five miles from the cemetery. It was a fine house, four bedrooms and a pool, with a side yard where Kathy grew tiger-striped dahlias in the summertime. David Harvelle managed a medical supply company, had always been friendly to Ellen despite the differences in their lives. Kathy wasn't as warm, but she'd always been gracious. The platters of cold meats and small pastries on the dining room table and sideboard were catered, the wine carefully chilled against the early summer heat.

Ellen stood at the kitchen sink and poured herself a glass of water, staring out the window. David's two girls--no boys to carry on the name, Bill had mourned--played on the swing set in the back, squabbling with three boys Ellen remembered were some sort of cousin, or maybe just family friends. The Harvelles knew everyone.

"Ellen, there you are." Her mother's voice, as anxious and high-pitched as ever. Ellen didn't turn around until she'd drained the glass, rinsed it, and put it in the dishwasher.

Her mother hovered in the doorway, one hand plucking at the brass buttons on her sweater. Through the opening Ellen could see Jo sitting carefully upright on Kathy's cream-colored couch; there was a run in her stocking visible just under the hem of the black dress, already too short although Ellen had bought it last fall. They went to too many funerals.

"Ellen, have you thought--" Her mother stopped, hesitated, and soldiered on. "You know David and Kathy would be happy to have you."

What? Oh.

"Mom, don't." It was an old argument, but one Ellen had been able to dodge while Bill was alive. Not even Nadine Holland would insist that Ellen leave her husband, if he refused to give up the roadhouse. But managing a bar on a dusty old county road was never what Nadine had imagined for her youngest daughter, and her grumblings had increased as Jo grew up. There was a reason Jo was Joanna and not Nadine or even Natalie.

"But honey," protested Nadine. "Jo's a good student, and she'd do so much better here, in the schools in town. You should be thinking about college for her, not--" She cut off at the sudden twitch Ellen gave, not quite insensible enough to finish the sentence _not wasting her life serving beer to drunk truckers and transients_.

If Nadine had had any idea of who many of the roadhouse's clientele _really_ was, she'd have called Social Services on Bill years ago.

*

 

The hunt that killed him was Bill's idea. He hadn't gone out in a while; it must have been almost three months, and Ellen had begun to hope he'd lost the itch. But then Jeannie Preston called with the report of the phouka, and Bill's eyes just lit up. He'd hesitated, though, for Ellen's sake: he knew how she hated when he went out alone. For her sake, he'd hunted alone less and less often in recent years. But Bill's last regular partner was Manuel Rodriguez, who'd retired a year ago after one too many dislocated shoulders.

And then John Winchester showed up, blown into town on the tatters of a storm, the wheel wells of his big black sedan packed with mud. John Winchester didn't work with anyone, everyone knew that. But John was expansive, smiling--the dimple Ellen had long suspected even making an appearance once or twice--and when Bill mentioned the possibility of a phouka, John raised his eyebrows. "You going after it, Bill? They're tricky bastards."

"Weeaaall," drawled Bill, stretching it out as he stood over the table, John's empty beer glass in one hand. Winchester always sat in the corner with his back to the wall, even when, as now, the bar was empty. "That's the thing. Really gotta have another gun, don't ya." Ellen wiped down the next table and emptied the ashtray; she didn't pause, but she did roll her eyes. Bill was many things--a good man, loving father, a poor pool player and reliably creative in bed--but he was never subtle.

"That's true," allowed John, a hint of a smile playing under the beard. "Last time I took one down, I had Dean about thirty yards out with the rifle."

_Dean_? Right--one of his boys. So John Winchester didn't _always_ hunt alone.

"And?" Ellen prodded, folding the damp rag over.

"Oh, we got him. Dean dropped him." John's smile this time wasn't hidden at all. "Boy's a crack shot."

"Learned from the best, I'm guessing," said Bill, and then dropped all pretense. "John, I'd take it as a kindness if you'd come along. It'd only be a couple days, and you'd do wonders for my marriage." He flashed a grin at that, and didn't dodge when Ellen snapped him in the ass with the dishrag.

John hesitated, tapping one finger on his open journal. A scrap of yellow paper slipped off the pile and landed in a tiny puddle of spilled beer. "Was planning to head on back for a bit," he said. "Catch one of Dean's baseball games before the season's over."

Ellen closed her hand tight on the rag: she knew Bill was going out, one way or another. But it was harder and harder to handle Jo when he was gone, now that she was old enough to see the hunters come back battered and bruised, scarred and shot--or not come back at all. The last time Bill went hunting Jo wouldn't eat for three days. Ellen wasn't going to ask, though: she knew Bill too well for that. So she started to turn away, just as John put a hand flat on the table and nodded decisively.

"Games can wait; phouka won't. I'll get your back, Bill."

Ellen allowed herself a moment of relief. John Winchester was a difficult bastard, but no one questioned his competence. Bill would be fine.

*

 

"The Weavers' daughter is in that new magnet school over on 17th, you know, and they say she's really doing marvelously." Nadine hadn't given up, she'd just changed her strategy. Ellen was pretty sure that her mother had recruited Kathy into the campaign, and soon they would be double-teaming her, one on either side of the buffet spread in the dining room.

It was only two o'clock; they wouldn't be able to leave for hours yet, and Ellen had told Nadine she'd shut the roadhouse down for the weekend. What Ellen hadn't told her mother was that the _real_ wake for Bill had started at dusk on Wednesday, eight hours after she'd walked out of the hospital, her wedding ring loose on her cold hand. There were at least thirty cars and pickups in the lot, Derrick had the key to the beer locker, and if the cops hadn't been called at least three times by now, Ellen would owe Jeannie Preston two cases of Bud long-necks.

"I hate Kelly Weaver," announced Jo out of nowhere, sliding into the narrow battleground between Ellen and her mother. "She wears pink all the time, and she made fun of my Christmas present."

Nadine smoothed over the anxious look on her face, changing in an instant from Insistent Mother to Concerned Grandma. "What Christmas present, Josephine?"

"The Bowie knife that Dad bought me. It's got a leather sheath and everything. It's _awesome._"

Ellen took a slug of lemonade to avoid cackling at the look on her mother's face. Sadly, it went down the wrong way, and she ended up whooping for minutes in the kitchen, Nadine and Kathy patting her on the back and offering white linen napkins. It was worth it, though, just for that expression.

_Bill would have loved to see that,_ she thought, mopping her streaming eyes, and it was only then that she began to cry. Kathy backed out of the kitchen silently, but her mother stayed, rubbing her hand in slow circles on Ellen's back, murmuring nonsense words as Ellen shuddered and sobbed, hunched in the old wooden rocking chair by the window.

*

 

"We've got it pinned down, baby. We'll finish it tonight and be back tomorrow. Love you!"

The voicemail was barely six hours old when Ellen's phone rang again; this time it wasn't her husband's voice she heard. Derrick took over for her behind the counter; Nick Walters drove her to the hospital, doing seventy-five to ninety all the way; and Jeannie's sister Brenda came over to look after Jo. No way was Ellen bringing Jo, not yet. Not until she knew.

If John Winchester was in the waiting room, Ellen didn't see him. Bill was unconscious, his head swathed in bandages, his neck braced in plastic and steel, and only his right hand free, the dirt still ground under his nails. She picked it up and squeezed it, but his strong fingers were lax in hers, the skin cold.

The noise of the ICU around her was muted, all the little electronic sounds attenuated as if passing across a barrier built of cotton wool. Bill's hand grew colder and his breathing slower and the doctors came and spoke to Ellen about _options_ and _outlooks_ and her eyes just turned back to Bill, fading as she watched him. They'd met when they were both seventeen, when Ellen was vibrant and young, her hair full of color; and Bill was tall and fiercely intense. They'd run off together a year later and Ellen had never regretted it.

Not once.

Sometime in the white hours, when even the nurses seemed to be gone, there was a rustle behind her shoulder. Ellen turned, never letting go of Bill's hand. John Winchester stood in the doorway, dark eyes sunken, blood on his broad hands.

Ellen put her back to him.

"It's dead." Winchester's voice was hoarse. There was a brief sound, a muffled choke. "I went back, and it's dead, Ellen."

As if that were what mattered. Ellen didn't turn around; eventually he must have left.

At seventeen minutes after eight, as the sun streamed in through the east-facing windows, Bill died.

*

 

People finally began to leave around five o'clock. First the second cousins, then the older folks, then the neighbors, finally, until the only ones left were David and Kathy--it was their house, after all--Nadine, Ellen, Jo, and David's girls. Ellen helped stack dirty dishes on the kitchen counters, then shook out tablecloths in the yard, watching the crumbs fly in the evening sun. Jo gathered paper plates in a big black trash bag she towed behind her, while her cousins squabbled over their own chores.

Ellen folded the tablecloth over her arm and stood for a moment, watching the wind in the cottonwood leaves, letting the girls' voices fade into the background. At home the wind would be making the western windows rattle, the way the roadhouse sat out alone in the open. No windbreak or hedges, no trees to soften the view, to civilize the landscape. Just the house, standing there on the plain, open to any who needed it.

Just a house with Bill's name on it.

"Ellen," said her mother as Ellen came back into her brother-in-law's house. "Kathy says that they have room tonight--"

"Jo," said Ellen, raising her voice over her mother's, as she had not done since she was eighteen and outcast. "Change into your jeans, girl. We're going home." Jo dropped the black trash bag--neatly knotted--with the others and raced upstairs, feet pounding on the stairway.

"But Ellen--"

"We're going home, Mom."

END

_She says wake up, it's no use pretending  
I'll keep stealing, breathing her  
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending  
One of us will die inside these arms_

_Eyes wide open  
Naked as we came  
One will spread our   
Ashes round the yard_

_She says if I leave before you darling  
Don't you waste me in the ground  
I lay smiling like our sleeping children  
One of us will die inside these arms_

_ Eyes wide open  
Naked as we came  
One will spread our   
Ashes round the yard_  
\--Iron and Wine, "Naked As We Came"


End file.
